


Let Me Breathe, Let Me Forget, Let Me Curl Up With A Friend

by anonymity



Series: Souls and Void [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Boys in Skirts, Gen, I honestly just, It's written as platonic, Kind of in a bad way, Muslim Character, Muslim Lance, Nightmares, Nostalgia, Pakistani Character, Pakistani Lance - Freeform, Platonic Cuddling, and it's not like a Thing it just happens for a bit, and it's relatively abstract, but interpret how you will I suppose?, it's just in the nightmare, just one boy, kind of, really don't care, suffocation, that's how I meant it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 14:54:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11762277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymity/pseuds/anonymity
Summary: Lance dreams of things he'd rather not, and chances upon a small green growing friend as he wanders away from his bedroom.





	Let Me Breathe, Let Me Forget, Let Me Curl Up With A Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Is part of a series, but can be read on it's own. Takes place after _Floating _.__

Everything is so empty and silent. Lance knows that this shouldn't be so strange, really, this emptiness, because the universe is far more empty space than matter. But he's grown so used to being able to reach out and touch things, grown so used to being able to reach out and touch people. He doesn't like the emptiness, the silence, the lack. Just the lack of anything at all, it crawls through his skin and lodges in his airways, heavy and suffocating yet still intangible.

Lance breathes in emptiness, void, he can't breathe. He can't breathe. He's- he-

 

He opens his eyes and stares at far wall of his room. He takes a moment to collect himself (you can breathe you can feel there are things around you and people around you you can breath you can breath) and then glances at the clock by his bedside. It's the middle of the night. He feels hot and sticky and uncomfortable.

Lance throws off his blankets and steps out of bed. The floor is cool against the bottoms of his feet. He sighs, stretches, and pulls his shirt over his head, fanning himself in an attempt to cool down a bit. Lance remembers nights like this, on a faraway planet draped in blues and greens, when the sun's heat lingered long and suffocating even after it had sunk beneath the horizon. He remembers midnight trips to the beach, muffled shrieks and delighted giggles of children trying desperately not to get caught; the lapping of saltwater over his toes, his calves, his knees, his hips, and the way the ocean whispered against his skin; the groaning of old wood as he crept back home across the pier with the songs of seabirds floating through heat-heavy air at his back.

If Lance listens now, he can hear the low humming of machinery working it's way through the castle and not much else. He groans and scrubs a hand across his face, through his hair, and stalks across the room to the closet full of clothes he'd found his first day here. He still feels like he's suffocating- the memories are suffocating, the silence is suffocating, the heat is suffocating, and he needs to get out of this room. 

It takes him a minute, but he manages to find something resembling a tank top, and settles for a short blue skirt in the absence of any shorts.

The hallway is noticeably cooler than his room, and he briefly wonders why before a vague memory of himself asking Coran if he could turn up the temperature in his bedroom filters to the front of his mind. Lance thinks he must have been feeling particularly homesick, longing for any semblance of something resembling home. Regardless, he'll have to fix that with Coran later.

Lance finds himself, inevitably, in the dining room, clutching a glass of water. He's not had much of a chance to explore the many twists and turns of the castle's hallways, and he doesn't particularly want to start in the middle of the night, while recovering from a nightmare. Sitting here at the table in the dark, he can pretend he has woken up not because of a nightmare but for Ramadan, and maybe Hunk or his mother is in the kitchen just there, making pakoras and kheer for him and his baji. He wonders when Ramadan is. Lance realizes he’d almost forgotten about it, after everything that’s happened, and he is filled with shame. What if it’s already happened- what if he missed it? He takes a breath and forcefully puts his panic out of his head. He will ask about it in the morning. Hunk would understand, or maybe if he explained it to Coran…. Lance puts his cup away and starts making his way towards the space he’d dubbed ‘the lounge.’

As he approaches, Lance can hear the sound of fingers flying across a keyboard, accompanied by a soft glow coming through the entrance to the lounge. He pauses in the doorway momentarily, unsurprised to find Pidge still awake, tapping away at her computer.

He leans against the doorframe and raps in gently with his knuckles. "Knock knock,"

Pidge starts slightly and turns to look at him. "Hey," she replies, "What's up?"

Lance shrugs. "Oh, not much. Had a weird kinda dream- and there's something with the temperature in my room, it's super hot in there. What are you still doing up?"

"I'm just... ah, working," she yawns, rubbing at her eyes under her glasses. She glances back at him again, then shifts her legs from their crossed position and sets her feet on the floor, sliding her laptop forward onto her knees. "Come sit," she says softly, patting the cushion beside her. Lance crawls over the couch cushions, draping himself across her lap, settling his arms around her waist and burying his face in her stomach. 

"Where'd you get the skirt?" he hears her ask above him, continuing whatever it was she was working on her computer.

"It was in the closet in my room when I got here," he mumbles into her shirt. 

"Really? I looked in mine, but everything in there was too big."

"That's cause you're tiny," Lance laughs softly. Pidge baps him lightly on the head. 

"Shut up, you big lanky goofball."

"Mmm, there's a buncha stuff in my closet that’s too small… you should come over some time. Try on some skirts with me,” Lance says sleepily. There is a momentary pause, as if Pidge is taking a moment to register his request, before she says “I think I’d like that, Lance. Thanks,” and Lance feels small fingers begin sifting their way through his hair, rhythmically making their way over his scalp.

“No problem, Katie,” he murmurs, slipping back into slumber. 

When the girl who is green and growing closes her laptop and leans back against the couch, whispers her affections into the quiet of the night and curls herself around a blue boy who doesn’t know who he is, the colors of their souls intertwine in the air around them and

For a moment,

The blue and green,

Spattered together like paints on canvas,

Water and Life,

Look startlingly like a distant planet

 

Called Earth.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so, it's about a quarter past 1 in the morning? And I'm hoping that the small amount of satisfaction I have with this story is not the result of sleep deprivation, and that anyone reading this will be able to enjoy it (nobody's reading this who am I talking to)
> 
> Also. For this series, I'm writing Lance as Pakistani. I am aware he is canonnically Cuban. I am not upset that he is cannonically Cuban. I really don't want this to be A Thing, I just want to write a Pakistani character and I really like Lance, so. 
> 
> Let me know (politely please) if you'd like me to tag anything. Constructive criticism (what'd I do wrong, what'd I do right) is helpful.
> 
> Have a nice day y'all :D


End file.
